Comparison of Conversation Analysis and Speech Act Theory

The essays collected in this book represent recent advances in our understanding of speech acts-actions like asserting, asking, and commanding that speakers perform when producing an utterance. The study of speech acts spans disciplines, and embraces both the theoretical and scientific concerns proper to linguistics and philosophy as well as the normative questions that speech acts raise for our politics, our societies, and our ethical lives generally. It is the goal of this book to reflect the diversity of current thinking on speech acts as well as to bring these conversations together, so that they may better inform one another. Topics explored in this book include the relationship between sentence grammar and speech act potential; the fate of traditional frameworks in speech act theory, such as the content-force distinction and the taxonomy of speech acts; and the ways in which speech act theory can illuminate the dynamics of hostile and harmful speech. The book takes stock of well over a half century of thinking about speech acts, bringing this classicwork in linewith recent developments in semantics and pragmatics, and pointing the way forward to further debate and research.

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God’s liturgical activity

10.1093/oso/9780198805380.003.0011 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Nicholas Wolterstorff

Keyword(s):

Speech Act ◽

Speech Act Theory ◽

The People ◽

Ancient Times

It is typical of Christian liturgical enactments for the people to pray and take for granted that God will act in the course of the enactment. This chapter first identifies and analyzes a number of ways in which God might act liturgically and then discusses at some length what might be meant when the people say, in response to the reading of Scripture, “This is the word of the Lord.” After suggesting that what might be meant is either that the reading presented what God said in ancient times or that, by way of the reading, God speaks anew here and now, the chapter suggests a third possibility by going beyond speech-act theory to introduce the idea of a continuant illocution in distinction from an occurrent illocution. Perhaps the reference is to one of God’s continuant illocutions.

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Sentence mood

10.1093/oso/9780199547524.003.0003 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Paul Portner

Keyword(s):

Speech Act ◽

Speech Act Theory ◽

The Other ◽

Major Topic

Sentence mood is the linguistic category which marks the fundamental conversational function, or “sentential force,” of a sentence. Exemplified by the universal types of declarative, interrogative, and imperative sentences (as well as by less-common types), sentence mood has been a major topic of research in both linguistics and philosophy. This chapter identifies the two main theories which address the topic, one based on speech act theory and the other on dynamic approaches to meaning. It explains and evaluates current research which uses the two theories, and identifies the most important insights which come out of each.

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Sexual Harassment, Speech Acts, and Public Secrets in U.S. Higher Education

The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190212926.013.50 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Erin Debenport

Keyword(s):

Higher Education ◽

Sexual Harassment ◽

Speech Acts ◽

Speech Act ◽

Speech Act Theory ◽

Discursive Space ◽

Online Conversations ◽

Survey Responses ◽

Discursive Representations

This chapter draws on data from U.S. higher education to analyze the ways that the language used to describe sexual harassment secures its continued power. Focusing on two features viewed as definitional to sexual harassment, frequency and severity, the discussion analyzes three sets of online conversations about the disclosure of abuse in academia (a series of tweets, survey responses, and posts on a philosophy blog) from grammatical, pragmatic, and semiotic perspectives. Unlike most prior research, this chapter focuses on the language of victims rather than the intentions of harassers. The results suggest that speech act theory is unable to account fully for sexual harassment without accepting the relevance of perlocutionary effects. Using Gal and Irvine’s (2019) model of axes of differentiation, the chapter demonstrates how opposing discursive representations (of professors, sexual harassers, victims, and accusers) create a discursive space in which it becomes difficult for victims to report their harassers.

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Intonazione e significato: l’esempio dell’italiano regionale di Bergamo

Romanistisches Jahrbuch ◽

10.1515/roja-2018-0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 69 (1) ◽

pp. 35-55

Author(s):

Giorgio Antonioli ◽

Manuela Caterina Moroni

Keyword(s):

Conversation Analysis ◽

Empirical Data ◽

Speech Act ◽

Research Project ◽

Preliminary Results ◽

Form Function ◽

Distinctive Type ◽

Selection Of

Abstract In this paper we present a selection of preliminary results of our research project “Intonation and Meaning”, in which we compare recurrent intonation contours in German and Italian regional varieties. We apply the method of German Interactional Prosody Research (Interaktionale Prosodieforschung), which in turn is based on Conversation Analysis, to a sample of selfcollected empirical data. Our aim is to show the value of intonation as a resource to contextualize speech activities and to point out form-function relationships between intonation patterns and speech act types. In this respect, we observe the usage of intonation contours with rising accent (L*H) and with falling accent (H*L) in the utterance of question activities, and provide evidence for the fact that the latter represent a distinctive type of questions with epistemic presupposition, whereas L*H correlates rather with default, modally unmarked questions.

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Uttering geographies: Speech acts, felicity conditions and modes of existence

Progress in Human Geography ◽

10.1177/0309132519884634 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 44 (6) ◽

pp. 1124-1140

Author(s):

Miles Ogborn

Keyword(s):

Speech Acts ◽

Speech Act ◽

Speech Act Theory ◽

Bruno Latour ◽

Human Speech ◽

Everyday Talk ◽

Modes Of Existence

The geographies of speech has become stuck in a form of interpretation which considers the potentially infinite detail of spoken performances understood within their equally infinitely complex contexts. This paper offers a way forward by considering the uses, critiques and reworkings of J.L. Austin’s speech act theory by those who study everyday talk, by deconstructionists and critical theorists, and by Bruno Latour in his AIME (‘An Inquiry into Modes of Existence’) project. This offers a rethinking of speech acts in terms of power and space, and a series of ontological differentiations between forms of utterances and enunciations beyond human speech.

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